Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night was the title of a 1975 New York Magazine article by British rock journalist Nik Cohn. It was the basis for the plot and characters in the movie Saturday Night Fever.
Around the time of the twentieth anniversary of the film, Cohn revealed that the article was actually a work of fiction. Assigned to write an article about the early 1970s disco scene, Cohn, a newcomer to the United States, was baffled by the working-class subculture he was trying to cover. In desperation, he created the characters that were to become Tony Manero and company.
